Potential large missions enabled by NASA’s space launch system

H. Philip Stahl; Randall C. Hopkins; Andrew Schnell; David Alan Smith; Angela Jackman; Keith R. Warfield

doi:10.1117/12.2233684

29 July 2016 Potential large missions enabled by NASA’s space launch system

H. Philip Stahl, Randall C. Hopkins, Andrew Schnell, David Alan Smith, Angela Jackman, Keith R. Warfield

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 9904, Space Telescopes and Instrumentation 2016: Optical, Infrared, and Millimeter Wave; 99040G (2016) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2233684
Event: SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation, 2016, Edinburgh, United Kingdom

Abstract

Large space telescope missions have always been limited by their launch vehicle’s mass and volume capacities. The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) was specifically designed to fit inside the Space Shuttle and the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is specifically designed to fit inside an Ariane 5. Astrophysicists desire even larger space telescopes. NASA’s "Enduring Quests Daring Visions" report calls for an 8- to 16-m Large UV-Optical-IR (LUVOIR) Surveyor mission to enable ultra-high-contrast spectroscopy and coronagraphy. AURA’s “From Cosmic Birth to Living Earth” report calls for a 12-m class High-Definition Space Telescope to pursue transformational scientific discoveries. NASA’s “Planning for the 2020 Decadal Survey” calls for a Habitable Exoplanet Imaging (HabEx) and a LUVOIR as well as Far-IR and an X-Ray Surveyor missions. Packaging larger space telescopes into existing launch vehicles is a significant engineering complexity challenge that drives cost and risk. NASA’s planned Space Launch System (SLS), with its 8 or 10-m diameter fairings and ability to deliver 35 to 45-mt of payload to Sun-Earth-Lagrange-2, mitigates this challenge by fundamentally changing the design paradigm for large space telescopes. This paper reviews the mass and volume capacities of the planned SLS, discusses potential implications of these capacities for designing large space telescope missions, and gives three specific mission concept implementation examples: a 4-m monolithic off-axis telescope, an 8-m monolithic on-axis telescope and a 12-m segmented on-axis telescope.

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H. Philip Stahl, H. Philip Stahl, Randall C. Hopkins, Randall C. Hopkins, Andrew Schnell, Andrew Schnell, David Alan Smith, David Alan Smith, Angela Jackman, Angela Jackman, Keith R. Warfield, Keith R. Warfield, "Potential large missions enabled by NASA’s space launch system", Proc. SPIE 9904, Space Telescopes and Instrumentation 2016: Optical, Infrared, and Millimeter Wave, 99040G (29 July 2016); doi: 10.1117/12.2233684; https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2233684

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